The reflections of a woman seeking her King and Saviour…

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‘How Long, O Lord’ – D.A. Carson

I have been finding it hard to start and finish a whole book since Matt’s accident. Normally I love to read – and when I think about think about it, I have a subconscious rule that I can’t stop reading a book until I have finished it. Not any more. I have realised there are no ‘rules’ when it come to reading…and I feel quite relieved and liberated!

So, yesterday I picked up D.A. Carson’s book ‘How Long, O Lord’ – with absolutely no intention of reading it cover to cover – and the following excerpt struck me.

We may succumb to the crush of the urgent. We think that if God is going to relieve our sufferings, he ought to do so immediately. Any delay vitiates his promises. We live in a fast-paced world, and we want God to respond with the same efficiency we expect from high-speed computers. We are not inclined to think through the delays in Scripture: Moses’ forty years in the back side of the wilderness, the delay of twenty or more years before Joseph is vindicated, the anguish even of the saints at the alter (Rev. 6:9-10). But God is not constrained by our petty timetables. Committed though he is to people’s good, he well understands that delays are not always bad. Moreover, if we walk with God long enough, we begin to learn the lesson ourselves: we look back from a longer perspective and start to appreciate that God’s timing is best. We may then marvel at our impatience. We are too much like children whose every request is stamped with “Now!”

Above all, many of us have not adequately reflected on the cross. We have been used to thinking of the cross as the means of our salvation; we have not thought much about what it means to take up our cross and die daily, or to fill up the sufferings of Christ.

That being said, I wish this pain and suffering could end “Now!”

Lord, help me to believe and trust that your timing is best. Help me to pick up my cross and follow you today.